Is Apple Terribly Undervalued? A Fund Manager Thinks So

Apple may have a market cap of nearly $350 billion, but it should be much higher, claims Andy Zaky in a passionately worded blog post.

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"The stock trades at an extremely depressed valuation that Wall Street isn't taking seriously (8.25 Forward P/E Ratio), the company's growth continues to outpace every large cap company on the entire S&P 500, and the company's growth rate percentage - defying all laws of gravity - continues to accelerate without any sign of abating," Zaky writes.

He blames assaults and negative reporting by publications such as CNBC, Bloomberg, The Street.com or Business Insider for the low valuation: "It's the highly misleading and faulty conclusions drawn from these inconsequential facts that has been so damaging for the stock over the years. If it isn't the Zune iPod Killer, or the Android iPhone Killer, then it's the Amazon Kindle Fire iPad Killer, which amounts to nothing less than the obvious end of Apple. Forget about reporting the actual facts or the news, everything is now editorialized."

Apple's stock is down from a $422 high in late October to about $376, which is enough to make Zaky believe that the stock has been attacked in a "concerted way", which has only gotten worse since Steve Jobs died. "Even though Apple has grown its earnings by 600% in four years, the stock has only risen 81%. And while 81% might seem like a lot, just remember that the company is essentially 7x larger than it was in 2007." According to Zaky, Apple's valuation level is the lowest in almost a decade.

His conclusion? The stock will have to rise rapidly now, just to remain at its "depressed" level. Just to stay where it is right now, the stock would have to climb to $577.72 next year, Zaky estimates.

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